If the shooter in Parkland, Florida had been named Mohamad, we can be sure that Donald Trump would have immediately taken to Twitter in an effort to use the tragedy as proof for the need of his Muslim ban. If instead, it was Jesus or Jose, the subject of those Tweets would have been his border wall. Instead, the killer was just a run of the mill domestic terrorist who used a gun to kill 17 people in a high school. Therefore, we will be told to offer hope and prayers and ignore that this was the eighth school shooting in this new year. To do otherwise politicizes the tragedy and disrespects the victims and survivors and their families.

Bullshit.

America failed the students, staff, and families of the Stoneman Douglas High School. We put the profits of the gun industry ahead of the lives of our children and allowed this needless cycle of death to continue. We elected politicians who we knew were in the pockets of the NRA, ignoring all the other previous school shootings and letting the students from Columbine and Sandy Hook to die in vain. We allowed hopes and prayers to replace action.